Like
many New Yorkers, I am not native to this place. I arrived from elsewhere,
and have made the city my home. My extended family lives in the Midwest.
They do not understand New York. I have an uncle who labors with an iron
work ethic in carpentry and flooring. He gets up every morning at 5:00 AM,
and I have often seen him working, trying to finish off a floor, after 9:30
at night. My uncle tells me that he could not live in New York City. It's
"too busy," he says. I laugh, wondering how he could get any busier than he
is in rural Wisconsin.

Such feelings about New
York are frequently expressed by my relatives. Their judgments aren't based
on any real knowledge of the city, its rhythms or its neighborhoods. Rather,
my family members use New York as a landmark. For them, it is an imaginary
place. The city is some place different from where they live. It embodies a
different way of life. When they express distaste for New York, they do not
intend to denigrate those who live there. They merely wish to express
appreciation for what they have, for the places they have settled.

I respect that. I know that
there are many people in this country who feel as they do, and it does not
bother me at all. Unlike some of our city's more chauvinistic promoters --
yes, they do exist -- I do not regard New York as the best possible place
for all people to live. Yet I will defend New York, as a city and as a way
of life, when called to do so. This is a week in which we are called. The
Republicans are trying to use New York to advance a social agenda that
assaults the diversity and tolerance at the heart of the city, and to
promote a fiscal program that starves urban centers. New Yorkers are right
in refusing to provide a cheerful backdrop for the Party's week of
self-promotion.

For members of the cultural
right wing in this country, New York occupies a place in the imagination
very different from that pictured by my relatives. In the view of social
conservatives, the city is a corrupted place. It is an immoral place. They
see our city as a hive of feminism and homosexuality and illegal
immigration. It is Gomorrah.

After the 9/11 attacks,
televangelist Jerry Falwell said, "I really believe that the pagans, and the
abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are
actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For
the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point
the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'"

For New Yorkers, this ranks
with the overt slander of the city offered by baseball player John Rocker.
"The biggest thing I don't like about New York are the foreigners," Rocker
explained in a famous Sports Illustrated interview. "You can walk an entire
block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English. Asians and
Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and
everything up there. How the hell did they get in this country?"

"Imagine having to take the
7 train to the ballpark," Rocker continued, "looking like you're [riding
through] Beirut next to some kid with purple hair next to some queer with
AIDS right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time
right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids."

These statements went far
beyond the pale, of course, even for staunch conservatives. Falwell was
compelled to apologize. Rocker has been universally reviled. Yet I fear that
their opinions tap into sentiments that are more often felt than stated
openly. The vision of the city that they invoke lives on, and milder
versions of their views appear regularly. Brad Stine, a popular
fundamentalist comedian who makes busy rounds of Promise Keepers conventions
and other right-wing events, jokes: "I thank God we've got a Texan in the
White House... You'll notice the terrorists didn't attack Texas."

The audiences laugh, but I
puzzle over what this is supposed to mean. What if we had a New Yorker in
the White House? The terrorists did attack New York. We were attacked.

I was recently targeted in
passing by conservative talk radio station which, to discredit a column I
had written, simply labeled me as "another left-winger from that bastion of
truth, New York City." That was all that needed to be said. The content of
my views did not need to be discussed. The city, apparently, had irreparably
mutated my Iowan DNA.

The New York Times
editorial page reported on July 10, 2001 that "Mr. Bush has been heard to
say privately that he cannot stand New York." The politics pursued by the
President's party have long reflected this dislike. Urban centers, with many
people of color and few reliable Republican voters, routinely receive less
in Federal support than they pay in taxes -- $11.4 billion less in 2002,
according to the Mayor's office -- with cuts in social services
disproportionately affecting city residents. Even after 9/11, New York, an
obvious target for future attacks, ranks 49th among cities in per capita
anti-terrorism funds from Washington, receiving $5.87 per person, compared
with $35.80 for Tom Ridge's Pittsburgh or $52.82 for Jeb Bush's Miami.

This week, the Republicans
want to use New York to promote their militarism and their moralism. If the
stage managers at their National Convention can help it, Jerry Falwell, who
offered a prayer at the 2000 convention, will not be in the cameras, nor
will Senator Rick Santorum. Yet these figures remain all too welcome in the
Republican Party. Asked if she was worried that prominent evangelicals were
going to get short shrift at the convention, Roberta Combs, president of the
Christian Coalition, told the Associated Press that she was unconcerned.
"We'll have a huge presence there," she said. "We have the president."

Those who will be on stage
are exactly the type of Republicans that the hard right has all but boxed
out of the Party. Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani -- being pro-choice, pro-gay
rights, and pro-gun control, not to mention a noted adulterer -- would be
viciously attacked and marginalized in party primaries across the country.
On the national scene, New York's vision of Rockefeller Republicanism is all
but dead.

I can accept the reality of
short-changed funding from Washington. I can stomach the dislike from
cultural conservatives. Those on the right can say what it will about New
York. But they cannot both revile our city and then claim it as a launching
pad for their political ambition. They cannot have it both ways. We will not
let them.

In early August, the local
ABC news affiliate reported that "a Manhattan public relations firm found 83
percent of those polled do not want the Republican convention in town." It
is likely that demonstrators on Manhattan's streets, outraged by the Party's
extremism, will outnumber the convention delegates by more than 50 to one.

The question, then, is
whether New Yorkers are wise to protest. Some liberal critics, most notably
ex-1960s activist Todd Gitlin, have arguing in the past weeks that protests
outside the Convention are liable to play into Bush's hands. They cite
Chicago 1968 as an ominous comparison. Some have even suggested that the
Republicans chose to have their convention in New York as a deliberate
provocation, with party leaders believing that they would benefit from
unruly demonstrations. While the commentators deny it, one might judge from
the tenor of their argument that they would prefer that there were no
protests at all. Whatever their intention, their actions have the effect of
discouraging attendance.

In some measure, I am
scared to go on the streets. I am not scared of the few activists, who do
indeed exist, who have an exaggerated sense of what vandalism can
accomplish. I am scared because the authorities have emphasized the risk of
terrorism and advertised the new weaponry they will use to control
demonstrations. I am scared because the tabloids and the police have
trumpeted the danger of "violent anarchists" -- an image that has been
repeatedly used to justify the militarization of police responses to
peaceful crowds, and that has little actual correlation to any marginal acts
of property destruction. I am scared because I have seen pre-emptive arrests
and unprovoked assaults first hand. I do not relish a clash in the streets.

Nevertheless, I will go. I
will go with the belief that a large protest is better than a small one. I
have no doubt that the Republicans will try to spin any protests to their
advantage. And I have no doubt that the protests will not poll well. They
never do. Even the most stately processions of the Civil Rights movement
drew criticism for "going too fast," and for operating outside bureaucratic
channels for change. But this does not mean that the demonstrations cannot
be effective.

The Republican Convention
is meant to be a tightly choreographed pageant. It is meant to be a sunny,
week-long advertisement for the Party. Republicans didn't choose New York to
provoke a battle in the streets. They chose New York so that they could wrap
their convention in images of 9/11. They chose New York so that they could
take our city's grief and use it to advance their agenda. They wanted to
take the memory of those days when we mourned together, honored our public
workers, and asserted that our diversity was a source of strength, and use
it as the backdrop for their pageant. They chose New York because they
thought they could get away with it.

Already there is indication
that, as they have before in their planning, those in the Bush
administration may have miscalculated. Their Party is not receiving a
triumphant, welcoming reception, nor does it seem that many in the city will
cooperate in producing scenes of pliable nostalgia. It is always preferable,
the convention managers know, to stay on message, to keep attention trained
on the stage show. Protesters are making this difficult. They are proposing
a different message. They are telling a different story, one not carefully
crafted to ensure reelection.

The great majority of those
who will protest this week have thought hard about fashioning creative and
dignified expressions of their beliefs. And the great majority of those who
protest will be New Yorkers. What neither the police nor the liberal
commentators have said is that the more residents who pick up signs during
the week and refuse to be extras in the Republican's advertisement, the
richer our dissent will become. The more New Yorkers who exercise their
liberties, the better it is for our democracy.

After all of their
scolding, revulsion, and fiscal slights, the Republicans want to claim New
York City as their own. This week, New Yorkers are telling them that they
can't have it.

Mark Engler, a writer based in New York City, can be reached via
the web site
www.DemocracyUprising.com, where this article first appeared. Research
assistance for this article provided by Jason Rowe.